Cry How Bright
by BugTongue
Summary: What happened in Kurapika's life between the massacre of his clan and the Hunter exam? How can a Twelve year old be expected to keep his culture alive? I made an attempt.


A/N: Hi, please take your own safety and comfort into account while reading this fic.

The sexual assault and grooming bit is between brackets, [like this.]

Feel free to comment, take ideas from this fic and run wild, and/or yell at me for how unnecessarily overwroght this is.

The title is from "Do not go gentle into that goodnight" by Dylan Thomas.

Not all stories have a definitive beginning or end, sometimes they just take place. Sometimes the beginning is too fleeting and the ending too sad, and the middle is where everything seems hopeful, and you need to take a moment to fully appreciate it before time moves, the wheel spins, and it's gone.

Kurapika was too young to understand that sometimes the happy ending lies in the middle of the story. He was too young and too heartbroken and too angry.

Kurapika brushed hay from his hair, long golden strands that reached down between his shoulders and covered his face to the nose when not pushed to the sides. It hadn't been cut since his parents were alive to do it and he couldn't yet bring himself to get rid of any piece of himself that had been touched by them. He left it down and leaned over the small space where he slept to grab his clothes and pull them on. He came here in the dead of night and hid until the farmer had come in and taken her tools out for the morning, so he hung his clothes behind a support beam to dry off the night's mist and dew. Mud seemed to be a permanent adornment for the soles of his shoes that he only scraped off once he was near enough to town for it to matter.

Today he was moving on to the next town, more of a city, more of a chance for him to blend in and not exhaust his options so fast. He was thirteen years old, too young to be hired and too strange to be welcome. Soon he'd have to deal with menstrual cycles and yet more growing pains, out on the road with no one to explain it to him beyond what was common knowledge in the village. What had been... He shook his head to clear the ache forming in his throat and jumped down from the rafters to land silently on the balls of his feet. It was only when the large barn door opened that he realized he hadn't heard the farmer come in yet, it seemed she was having a late start today.

Bad luck.

Kurapika skittered backwards behind the tractor, edging towards the loft where he'd have the advantage of height, but the farmer had called out to him. "Come on out, rascal, you ain't slick enough to keep playing hide and go seek with me." The farmer was thrice his age at most and rarely buttoned up her shirt, boots beat out of recognizable shape and the colorless shade of something waterlogged and sunbaked. She waited against the barn door until Kurapika trepidatiously stepped out from behind the farm equipment that dwarfed his already slight frame.

"You knew I was there." Kurapika's hands became fists at his sides to match the tension in the rest of his body.

The farmer nodded almost boredly. "Yeah, knew you were there since last week. Needed the hay you was sleepin' in." That gave Kurapika pause.

"So why didn't you wake me up or chase me out?"

"Some kids sleepin' in my barn ain't no kid with a good family to get chased off towards. Figured you needed the spot." She shrugged.

Kurapika stared at her with his brow furrowed and his breath shallow until she pushed off from the door to take a step out of the barn. "Figurin' you might need somethin' to eat, the tables all set nice and pretty if'n you wanna take what's given to ya." She turned towards the house without waiting for him to respond.

He followed.

Breakfast was a few different kinds of fruits cut into small pieces thrown over top some oatmeal with syrup. It was the first real meal Kurapika had eaten since running out of money and he barely had the room to fit it all in his stomach. He drank the glass of milk set out for him and crossed his ankles under the table as he looked at the farmer over the rim of his glass. Berry juice was still under his lips and under his tongue, seeds coming loose enough to snap under his teeth.

"... Thank you."

The appreciation got her to look up and give a closed-mouth smile as she chewed. She drank coffee from a steaming mug and set it down without letting go of the handle. "Don't worry 'bout it kiddo, my little sis used to live with me an' I'm still used to stocking up for two. You tell me why you were in the barn and I might be able to put you to work 'round here. For a bit."

Kurapika set his glass down and looked at the threadbare tablecloth to think. He couldn't tell her what clan he was from, even kind people reacted with cruelty sometimes if they were desperate or scared. Beyond that he... Didn't want to talk about it. It still felt like a physical weight on his ribcage trying to suffocate him. He shook his head and swallowed thickly. "I was going to leave this morning, but thank you."

She sent him away with food and a blanket anyway, and he wondered if he should have asked her name.

the rain was heavy and cold, seeping into his thick clothes to weigh him down and make every move sluggish as he ran. His heart was in his throat, he was running out of steam but he couldn't stop, not here, not when he was being chased by someone who knew.

Kurapika was fourteen years old and right now he wasn't sure hed make it to fifteen.

"Quit running! The longer you run the more pissed off we're gonna be when we catch you!" Branches snapped as they chased him through the city park, mud soaking up into his pant legs and rubbing the skin raw inside his shoes. He ran into the bathroom and pulled out his wooden swords, shaking from more than the cold.

"Stop following me, I don't want to kill you but I will!" He heard someone snort, the sound echoing through the vents in the walls. He stood there catching his breath when something clattered across the floor. When he realized it was a rock it was too late to dodge the one aimed at his shoulder, and he ducked behind the wall towards the sinks with a yelp.

When they followed him into the bathroom they brought chaos with them. Kurapika was a decent fighter, but not against three people and not after someone bounced his skull off the bathroom sink. They hauled him to his feet and held his arms impossibly tight behind his back, half-marching half-dragging him out into the rain. He was disoriented, which was only made worse when he tried to trip his captor and was thrown down into the mud. One of them kicked him once in the stomach hard enough to make him gag, and once in the mouth so he could taste only blood. Someone else kicked him in the gut again and dragged him to his feet. They took him by the face and forced him to look up at them through the rain, revealing the older girl from before who had recognized his eyes.

"Get your act together or I'll knock your teeth in, understand? Nod, bitch." He spat blood at her and she grabbed him by the hair, rattling his teeth in an exaggerated nod of affirmation.

He wasn't going to make it to fifteen, he wasn't even going to make it past tonight. They were going to kill him and rip out his eyes like the rest of his family, he began to breathe short and fast, completely oblivious to the kid laughing at him. That is, until the girl slapped him to knock him from his panic. His head shot up and his vision tunneled all the way down until he could only see the person who'd struck him.

He didn't know how he got there, but when he tired himself out enough from his rage he found himself strangling one kid with both hands. Two others had run away in including the one who'd waited outside the bathroom while he'd been jumped, and another was lying unconscious in the mud. Kurapika let himself be shoved back, let the person get up, and let them run away into the night.

The last time hed blacked out like this it had been to defend Pairo's honor, when his family was still alive. He picked himself up off the ground slowly and returned to the bathroom to retrieve his wooden swords, but his legs gave out when he tried to straighten back up, his knees shaking as hard as the rest of him. Even his teeth were chattering hard enough he was vaguely worried they might chip.

It seemed he would live tonight, and he'd even make it to his next birthday if he could learn to fight eithout blacking out like that.

The city to the north was harsher, filled with plenty of people willing to scrap over cash in the street. Kurapika had begun to eat less, sleep less, and lost his baby fat everywhere except his face which had stayed stubbornly round.

He was currently hanging out in a pizzeria and washing some stolen pain meds down with his fifth soda refill of the day. He'd run out of pads yesterday right when he needed them, and had decided to spend the day sitting in the seat closest to the bathroom so he could keep changing out the toilet paper he kept folding up and shoving in his underwear. He felt like garbage, he wanted a shower and a blanket more than anything in the world but for now he'd settle for shoving his toes into the heating grate beneath his table. He put his head down on the table and ignored the way the other patrons kept glancing uncomfortably at him.

Kurapika's knuckles went white against the cup in his hand and the fabric of his tunic just over his abdomen as another wave of pain radiated up from below his guts, making him pale even more than natural. He'd learned how not to flinch or grimace or groan from most forms of pain he'd get through fighting or naturally, but he couldn't control everything. When the manager came over to ask if he was going to order anything else he nodded and said, "in a moment."

"No, I need you to order now or leave so someone else can use this table." The manager crossed his arms, displeased and inconvenience.

"... A slice of cheese pizza." Kurapika glanced up at him without moving, thankful when he wasn't asked for the money up front. He used the restroom again before the pizza was brought out for him, and as soon as the manager had gone back into the kitchen he grabbed his bag and his food and booked it out the door. He couldn't go back there any time soon, which sucked because it was some of the cheapest food around. It's not that he liked thieving it was just that he had no money in his pockets. Maybe if he went back with the money later, Mozelli wouldn't kick him out or call the authorities.

He ran a few blocks away and slipped down an alley to eat his pizza before it got cold, headed towards the only bar in the city that would let him wash dishes for pay. He never asked for alcohol and only stole the old stuff that was going to be thrown out, and even that he sold to other people. He went inside and shoved his bag under the counter, then grabbed a smock and got to work. They sold food here, but you couldn't pay him to eat it, his desire to eat entirely outweighed by his desire to not throw up.

"Kurapika, kid, you're too early." One of the bar tenders tilted their head at him like they were uncomfortable reprimanding him. "You know you're not gonna get paid overtime, don't ever work for free."

Kurapika just shrugged. "It's warm in here, it's snowing outside, I'm working for that." His explanation got a sigh from the other but he was left alone to do his task until closing time.

Soon he was going to have to go back to the village, he was outgrowing his clothes beyond comfort and he was tired of sleeping in stairwells and abandoned stores. He needed a haircut too, but that wasn't really a need so much as a want. He wanted to stop getting weird looks on the bus from weird people, he wanted to stop being called miss, and he wanted to stop getting knots he had to fight to get rid of. His hair hung in his face and reached down to his as yet still flat chest, too thin to stay tucked behind his ears.

He'd make a little more cash first, and then he'd go home. He told himself that every day, but it was true, it had to be true or else what was the point of saying it?

Kurapika was fifteen years old when he finally went back to the village, half-reclaimed by nature and silent as the grave. He walked past The Mound without even twitching towards it and went straight to his old house to rifle through the dressers for clothes that would fit him. Nothing in his old room would work, and he was still much smaller than his parents had been when they died. The house three over and closer to the river had been where an older boy had lived, so Kurapika went there next and grit his teeth so hard they ached as he passed a gouge in the wall. The clothes in the chest were musty and had a couple holes, but it was nothing he couldn't repair.

He stayed for a month. He nearly didn't leave.

He knew how to forage for food, how to fish the river, how to make a fire and keep it going in the furnace. What he didn't know how to do was look at his parents' belongings without curling up into a ball and crying until he ached. He pushed his face into the bedrolls ad pretended he could still smell them, that they hadn't faded from existence after three years, that time had not taken this away from him too.

Kurapika still avoided The Mound, the mass grave, because it felt so empty and spiritless he couldn't bare to even acknowledge it was there. In his culture, the dead didn't stick around and fester like worms, they moved on to become part of the earth. The very trees here were his clan, his family, according to what he learned as a child. There was no eternal torture or reward for the living to get when they passed, and this idea gave him no comfort whatsoever. It made him queasy, actually, to imagine that the gods looked in on the world and thought everyone should be content to exist and morph and be together no matter how they treated each other. He rather liked the idea of a hell. He hoped that's where murderers went, and he planned to send every last member of the phantom troupe there, he'd go with them if it meant holding them down so they could never be part of the cycle again.

Eventually, when spring was nearing its end, he packed a new bag with food and supplies before making his way back to the land of the living.

[The-

No.

The house-

No. No.

He-

Kurapika ran as hard as he could away from the house with the dead man inside.

The man's name was Cadro, and he seemed happy enough to let Kurapika stay in his home without asking where he came from or why he didn't have a home already. It was odd, but Kurapika had long since learned that beggars could not be choosers. So he had stayed and settled in and worked to earn his keep. He did chores and learned to cook things on an electric stove, like he really was a kid, like he didn't have to fight every day to feed himself and find a place to sleep.

Cadro himself was... He was odd, but harmless. He was too warm maybe, too ready to ruffle Kurapika's hair or touch his shoulders, but it wasn't as if his parents had never done the same. Perhaps he wasn't odd, perhaps Kurapika had simply gone too long without proper human contact.

"Nonsense, the couch is uncomfortable at best, and the bed is big enough for three people." Cadro waved off his concerns about sleeping arrangements, driving his anxiety into the ceiling. They had finished eating dinner and Kurapika had tried to turn down the invitation, saying he was just fine on the couch, but the "growing boys need a healthy bed" and "the living room isn't a bedroom" arguments had been spoken too solidly for him to push farther. So, Kurapika found himself settling into bed wearing his white underclothes and feeling extremely uncomfortable.

The first week was fine. Awkward, but fine, and he managed to grow accustomed to sharing a bed without any embarrassing nightmares. Apparently a week was as long as he could go, however, before he woke up crying only to find himself being pulled into a warm pair of arms and shushed until he calmed down and fell back asleep, thinking of his father. Waking up was another story.

He regained consciousness wondering why his house looked so strange, and wondering if his mother had gotten up early, since he couldn't hear her breathing. Then he wondered why he was being held so closely, and remembered this was not his childhood home, and this was not his father holding him strangely. There was an arm thrown over him so the hand was curled loosely at his chest, and the line of his back and pressed against on all points by a much larger torso, his knees bent with another pair of knees just behind his to keep him curled up. His heart hammered and he carefully moved to extract himself, only to be pulled back down and squeezed.

No. He wasn't thinking about this, he didn't need to anymore, it was over.

Kurapika hissed and shoved the arm off of himself and rolled over the side of the bed onto the floor until he felt calm again. Cadro shifted, then leaned over to look at him. "What are you doing?"

"What are YOU doing?" He stayed crouched there, ready to run.

"You woke up up by crying, Kurapika, I was comforting you." Cadro looked sad, maybe pitying and he held a hand out to help Kurapika back into bed. Kurapika was too wired to sleep but he guiltily allowed himself to be pulled back under the sheets, one arm draped over him like before but with a bit of space between them. He was sure Cadro could feel the way his heart was beating but the man didn't say anything about, just sighed and settled back in.

That became the new norm, and he could feel the insidiousness of it without really understanding it. It was nice, but it made him uncomfortable, made him feel fluttery and nervous. Kurapika tried to explain it away in the same manner that Cadro did but he couldn't help but feel like he was being duped. Cadro didn't stop him from doing research on the spiders in his spare time, or interrupt his training, only held him at night and touched his face or his arms or his back during the day.

Kurapika felt bad for feeling uncomfortable, mostly. Sometimes he woke up in the night with a hand under his shirt against his stomach, or a few fingertips under his waistband, and he would feel that thrill again.

Tonight there was a hand at his waist and sliding up higher. The difference was he had just laid down after shutting off the light, he was awake and Cadro was awake and he felt his face heat up when he startled. "What-"

Cadro rubbed the palm of his hand over Kurapika's stomach and pushed a knee up against the back of his legs. "Calm down now, I won't hurt you. Right?"

"..." This was demonstrably true, Cadro had never hurt him yet. "Right, yeah..." His breath hitched and stilled as one warm hand moved higher to cup one small breast and toy with the nipple.

"Shh... That's nice isn't it? It's nicer if I can use both my hands-"

"S-stop. I don't want you to, I just want to go to sleep. It's, been a long day." He flushed deeper when Cadro didn't stop playing with his breast, only hummed softly in reply.

"I've been patient enough, don't you think? I let you stay here, eat my food and use my internet, sleep in a real bed, without asking much of you." His hand left Kurapika's shirt to his immense relief only to keep sliding down to his thigh. Cadro's hand pushed up between his legs to cup his groin and Kurapika didn't even think before jamming his elbow back and up to knock against Cadro's skull.

Kurapika jumped out of bed while Cadro reached after him, snagging the fabric of his pants and hauling him back into range. He got the heel of a palm to the nose for his trouble, as well as a kick to the side of the head. Kurapika could feel the boost of speed and strength and this time he knew what he was doing, knew how to focus on the fight itself.

Cadro came after him and Kurapika blocked his attempts to restrain him until he bumped into the door and flung himself out of the bedroom. He ran down the hall and headed for the stairs, jumping over the railing to the floor when it seemed he was being followed too closely. While he landed a little hard but otherwise without injury, he heard Cadro yelp and a fair amount of loud thumps. When he whipped around to see what direction he should run in, he realized he was no longer being chased at all.

At the foot of the stairs, in a heap of night clothes and limbs, was Cadro. He looked off to the side unnaturally and as Kurapika stepped closer he noticed a small trickle of blood seeping from his mouth.

He-

He was safe, he was fine. He was choking on air as he ran off in the middle of the night with his bag hastily thrown over his shoulder, shoes and overclothes held tight in his hands as he got some space between him and the house.]

This wasn't a new skill he'd learned, but this was the first time he'd found himself living this way.

Kurapika was a couple months shy of his birthday, and he was out of money again. He was also in trouble for a great many things and needed to get very far away. Thus far he had been moving from city to city near enough to his destroyed home that he could go back if he needed clothes or weapons or... Or to just be there, but now he was being accused of murdering someone, now he was in trouble for stealing food too often, for trespassing and loitering and the few nights he'd spent in a jail cell weren't something he wanted to repeat.

So he was leaving for wherever this train would take him. He had jumped onto it when it slowed down around a bend and climbed into an empty car to pass out until it stopped moving. When he woke up it was to the sound of sheep moving by swiftly, dew heavy along his body and mist chilling him in the early pre-dawn light. He sat up to take in the dark lilac morning and watched the sheep idly. Having only a little food in his pack for the day, he'd be skipping breakfast. The sheep were replaced by thin white trees that watched him back, then thicker trees overrun by vines. Ponds choked with lilies popped up now and then, and flowers ran amok in the sunny patches illuminated by the rising sun. It seemed the train was moving deeper into the country, and he might have to hop off at some point before he got starved out.

He found more and more that he liked the idea of jumping off the train and staying in the woods for a while. They weren't like his curling tropical home, and that almost sweetened the deal further, it was nothing like home and everything like a soft place to renew his soul before the journey ahead. Kurapika stared longingly out at the meadows and forest until they were marred by farms and towns once again.

The train pulled up to a platform made of thick, mottled grey stone, where Kurapika jumped off at last and went tromping down a ravine to the creek below for a fresh drink, stuffing identifiable fungi and berries into his bag as he went. At the bottom he plucked bulbs from the mud and rinsed them, and went about collecting nuts he'd come to know were edible even if they tasted strange. It was there, with his bare feet in the water and the sound of equipment being unloaded far above him, that he realized why he couldn't stay in a place like this. It took the flame in his heart and gently dulled it to a warm ember, then filled him up with so many things a fire could destroy.

It tamed him, undid the harshness the world had cast him in and made him softer than he ever would have been. His throat tightened and he leaned over to splash water in his face.

"Wake up... Wake up Kurapika. You have things to do." It could have been his mother's voice saying it, his mother's face in the dappling reflection. It could've been her once, telling him to wake up and tend the bees, count the chickens and collect their eggs, help with the weaving and check on Pairo across the way. In fact the idea that it never would be her voice still struck him as odd even after all these years. Hers had been the first voice he ever heard, and it'd stopped sounding long before it should have.

He turned sixteen in a couple months. He could tell by the stars, and by the small calendar he kept in his bag. It was important to him to remember the seasons even if he had no food to make a feast of or people to eat it with, even if he forgot the steps to the festival dances. Even if he couldn't spell the feast days and religious days in this common language or remember his old one well enough to the same end.

It had been three years and hed forgotten so much it made him feel strange and confusing, like his mind was a broken pot and the thoughts all tumbled out like rainwater. Part of him wanted to believe he was just blocking off the memories so he could function, but another part of him that thought dark things and showed him old news reels told him he was genuinely forgetting his culture, just like everyone else. The very idea was repulsive enough to send him to his feet and clamber back up the ravine to climb onto the train again before it left.

The sky turned a brilliant orange in the late afternoon, then a deep red before finally breaking out in a soft pink blush that led into the night hues. The stars came out to shine down on him and he sighed, making a game of finding his constellation as it rose up into the sky. The sign of the ram in some cultures, the sign of the dolphin in his.

He could remember his mother telling him inside their hut, with him settled between her and his father on the sleeping mats, about their signs and what they meant.

"The dolphin from the story isn't just any dolphin," His mother had a way of speaking that felt almost magical, painting the pictures across his drooping eyelids. "It helps a girl who's fishing raft broke apart in unseasonably rough waves, sending her into the sea. Her fish all were washed away and the nets got caught on some rocks, which she clung to in order to keep from drowning, but no one could hear her from the shore. She prayed to the ocean for help, cheek against the wet rock, and the ocean sent her a dolphin. It carried her back to the shore, but not before taking her with to chase all her lost fish up onto the sand with the help of it's family."

"Is that why you go fishing with Pairo's mom and the others? To be like the dolphins?" His voice was barely more than a sigh and he drifted a little when her hand came up to brush his hair back off his face.

"That's the rumor anyway. I think the elders just couldn't fathom how that girl came up with a better way to fish than them." Her words caused his father to laugh softly, more at her conspiratorial tone than at the words themselves. Kurapika giggled.

"What about your sign? And father's?" He couldn't remember if she answered him that night, he had fallen asleep shortly after.

Kurapika woke to the sound of wolves harmonizing in the distance, his face wet with something he couldn't claim to be dew.

For his sixteenth birthday, Kurapika cut his hair.

He sat in the empty lot with his back to the tin generator box, pulled out the knife that had once belonged to his father, and cut the long blond hair one inch at a time. It was supposed to be a sign of growth, but it felt more like a betrayal the farther along he got, until it was up off his eyes and he dropped the knife in the dirt. Bits of hair covered him and the ground he sat on in a small radius, midday light glinting off the short strands. He couldn't breathe. He was sixteen and he'd had to buy a shirt two sizes too small to flatten his chest with because he was growing older, he was growing. People in the store hadn't even considered he might not be a girl, with a look at the round face and long hair and flowing clothes, and wasn't that really why he'd cut his hair?

He put his face in his hands. This wouldn't solve the problem, this would only show off more of his face. But it was shorter now, boyish, out of the way and less work. So why was he sobbing openly like this? Was it the fact that the ends of his hair had known his mother's touch? The way his heart ached told him yes, that was exactly why he felt so horrible. He would have had to cut it eventually anyway. His father should have been the one to cut it with his knife, make it look like his.

He turned sixteen today, he was an adult now in the Kurta clan, though not one expected to own his own assets or take part in counsel, but one who was in charge of his own decisions and personhood. Today he could have picked a new name. He found that he didn't want a new name for the same reason he didn't want to cut his hair. Kurapika should be covered in flowers and eating a fish dinner right now, not maiming his hair and eating stale chips. He should be dancing around and singing and telling his life story to the whole clan, then allowing himself to be anointed under his chosen god. He didn't even know which one he would have chosen, he never got to study that!

He brought his knees up and slid his head down between them while he held his face, the crying only seeming to get worse.

This was never going to be okay. This was never going to stop hurting. He was only ever going to miss what he could never have now, things he never got to learn or experience. He couldn't carry on his culture when he only knew enough to fit inside a discontented twelve year old's brain. He remembered hating lessons because he only ever wanted to go play and get as far from home as he could.

Slowly he felt the pain ebb, his eyes feeling sticky and raw while his mouth was dry, and hair stuck to the tear tracks on his face as he put the knife away and stood up to brush dirty and hair off his clothes. This wouldn't do, not even a little bit. He would dedicate himself to a god today, certainly.

Kurapika walked a half hour away to the nearest church, knowing the doors would open and let him come inside to sit at a pew. The place was incredibly large with enormous, colorful windows of stories he only half understood. This was a house of one god, whose followers believed that he was the only deity, but he wasn't who Kurapika was here for. He looked up at the pictures of the angels and wondered if there was any that specifically looked over righteous vengeance. He'd been told that was a sin, but he figured it was only because it was too close to godly thinking to be allowed.

He thought of the hell they talked about often here, thought of the one who looked after it, and bowed his head. Kurapika had no oils or flowers on him, but he supposed sticking a small mint from the greeter's table in his mouth and swiping his thumb over his tongue and across his forehead would do well enough. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander as if in meditation, his mind's eye becoming overwhelmed by the thought of fire and never ending torment, something he wished to bring to every member of the Phantom Troupe. He would dedicate himself to this, a god of just punishment, and shackle his enemies to this place.

He got up and made his way towards the road, but was stopped by the greeter from before.

"What's your name? I've seen you here so many times but I've never asked." It was a woman with hair like dark roses and skin that reminded him of the rich earth from home. Her eyes were kind, and he felt that pull he always felt towards true kindness, allowing her to call him over.

"I'm Kurapika, and you're... Meidah." He looked at her handwritten name tag, then smiled back up at her.

"Hello Kurapika. I like your new hair, do you need someone to trim it up or do you like it better that way?" She laughed and he didn't feel like he was being mocked, so he laughed quietly as well.

"I did it just before coming here. It's my birthday, I was trying to make it special. If you know someone who-" he stopped as her face lit up.

"I do! Actually, I can do it myself but since it's your special day let's get you something from the pantry too. Do you like sweets?" She came around from behind the low counter and waved someone over to take her place while she led you around the curve of the sanctuary.

"You don't have to give me anything, it's really alright..." He avoided the look she gave him and thought better of his response. "I... Would really just like something real to eat if that's acceptable." She took him down some stairs to a floor that was ground level on the other side of the church, and through a door leading into a veritable grocery of food. It was mostly cans, but there was plenty of bagged and jarred foods and a few fresh items near the front. She caught him eyeing a can of fish and calmly handed it to him.

"There's some bread over here you can have with that, and bottles of water and juice too. We just got the shipment for the week, I guess He knew you were coming." She gives him an oddly knowing smile and Kurapika didn't ask who she meant, just took the small bag of rolls and bottle of apple juice she handed him. There was a man sitting at a folding card table in a wheelchair, and he gave them a wave. He looked a little more tired than the greeter, a little less peppy, but when Meidah told him it was Kurapika's birthday he asked how old.

"I'm sixteen today." He was short on things to say, nearly overwhelmed by... All of this. He stayed that way even after she fixed his haircut and complimented his clothes on the way out.

He couldn't say everyone at that church, or any really, had made him feel that welcome and wanted, but He'd been willing to trust her instinct that perhaps someone out there wanted this day to be good for him. She thought it was her God, he thought... He hoped it was his family. Maybe the idea of them watching his life unfold was uncomfortable, but their desire for him to be fed sure fit.

He went back to the empty lot that he'd been calling home lately, and sat down in the shade a distance away from the cut hair to eat a feast for one.

"I heard it's going to be really difficult this year."

"It's difficult every year and you know it's, don't be stupid."

"You're stupid, fuck off."

Kurapika sat on the boat currently headed for Whale Island, and after that to the Hunter exam. He'd heard about this a few months ago, enough time to get some training in and do as much research as possible. He'd been able to get a job finally and make enough money to buy a phone and some minute cards, and actually eat decently for the first time in a long time. A homeless shelter and some good luck had meant he was as ready for this as he ever would be, and he needed to take the chance in front of him. If he got a Hunter's license he could stop dreaming and start planning, he could take down the monsters that ruined his life and retrieve the eyes of his people. He could actually do this.

He felt his heartbeat began to race and forcefully calmed himself down. At port he got some decent food, the kind that would never keep well on a boat, and sat with his back to the sea for a bit. He'd be on it again soon enough, for now he was going to take this moment like he took every moment; as it came along.


End file.
